Good evening, dosage
Last week, approved my tip of the week focused on a politics page: a Newstalk branded page that– in addition to providing you with ad opportunities and great content– would also promote some of the political coverage coming from Townhall.com. This week, I wanted to focus on another way we could bring the concept of “One World” into even sharper focus.
That brings us to John’s Monday Tip of the Week.
Several weeks ago, Dave Santrella’s office sent out an e-mail to all of the Newstalk General Managers in regards to the Townhall.com database. Townhall.com has a huge database of subscribers and they have agreed with help our Newstalk stations promote major events and opportunities.
They’ve offered to send out e-mail blasts to their subscribers in your communities for your major events. Because we don’t want to overwhelm the subscribers, we’ve usually limited these sends to one (or possibly two) per Newstalk station each year.
This past weekend, WNTP, our great station in Philadelphia, asked for the TH team to send out an e-mail in the Philly area to the subscribers in that area. That e-mail invited Townhall readers– who might not have even known there was a conservative station in their market– to come to WNTP’s debate watch party this week. Philly took the opportunity to spread the word about their event and build up their listener base.
If your station has a major upcoming event that you want to promote to the Townhall database in your area, please let me know a few weeks in advance so we can get everything set up in advance.
All you would have to do to make this happen is a.) let me know in advance about the event b.) send me the HTML for the e-mail and the subject line. I will test out the e-mail with you before we send it along to the Townhall.com team for their official send.
If you’re interested in this though, I wanted to offer two main pieces of advice.
1.) There’s an old proverb. “If you teach a man to fish, he’ll eat for a day. If you teach a man to fish, he’ll eat for the rest of his life.”
With that in mind, if you want to send out an e-mail promoting a major station event in your market, that’s awesome BUT you should also try to use this opportunity to make new lifetime fans of your station. In the e-mails you want to send out, I would suggest including a link to your website, or your mobile app or your newsletter sign up page. We want the TH users who receive this e-mail to become fans of your station.
Using an eBlast to promote an event is great BUT wouldn’t it be even better if through this e-mail, you were able to turn a stranger into a lifetime station listener?
2.) Use the eBlast to get your message across. The eBlast to the TH subscribers in your area is a great opportunity to spread your station’s message to people who might not know about your station. With that in mind, ask yourself: what message would you want those users to see?
Imagine a preacher who speaks to his small congregation week after week. His Church has a lot of members but he can’t get people to come to Mass every week. Imagine if one day that preacher went to Church and saw that every seat was filled, the standing room only section was packed and there were people there who hadn’t been to Church in years.
What message would that preacher want to give them to keep them coming back to Church and to let them know what the Church offers.
That might not be the best example but you get the message. If you decide to send out an e-mail to promote an upcoming event or program, please use that opportunity to let TH subscribers know what you offer and why they should keep coming back to your station time and again.
If you want to pursue this, let me know so we can start hammering out details.
This has been John’s Monday Tip of the Week.
Have a great week, y’all!
Best,
John
